We are broadcasting from the United Nations climate summit in Lima, Peru, where high-level talks have just gotten under way. On Tuesday, Bolivian President Evo Morales called on delegates to include the wisdom of indigenous people in the global agreement to address climate change and criticized the summit for failing to address capitalism as the root of the crisis. We discuss the state of the climate talks with Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigerian...

As we broadcast from the U.N. Climate Conference in Lima, Peru, where delegates from around the world are meeting on a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, the first text of this year’s draft has been released. We are joined by Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s former ambassador to the United Nations and former chief negotiator on climate change. Now the executive director of Focus on the...

Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have opened the door to granting asylum to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in a standoff with the United States. The offers came after a plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to land in Austria after France and Portugal barred it from their airspace over false suspicions that Snowden was on board. The United States has refused to confirm or deny whether it was...

A historic trial underway in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and '80s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign known as "Operation Condor" involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. They worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: leftist activists,...

Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith are the co-authors of a new book about the U.S. role in the killing of Cuban revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Born in Argentina in 1928, Che rose to international prominence as one of the key leaders of the 1959 Cuban Revolution that overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. After a period in the new Cuban government leadership, Che aimed to spark revolutionary activity...

In 2010, then-Ambassador Pablo Solón headed Bolivia’s climate negotiating team for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico. However, for this year’s climate summit he joined climate justice activists outside the official conference in the streets of Durban demanding the United States, and other historically large greenhouse gas emitters, agree to legally binding emissions cuts. "Developed countries, like the U.S.,...

Talks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference are in their second to last day, but little progress appears to have been made on the key issues of extending the Kyoto Protocol or forming a Green Climate Fund. The United States is refusing to accept any deal involving binding emissions cuts before the year 2020 despite dire warnings that the world can’t afford to wait. We get analysis from Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s former...

This week the United Nations General Assembly discussed international standards that grant nature equal rights to humans. Similar protocols have been adopted by over a dozen U.S. municipalities, as well as Bolivia and Ecuador. Renowned environmentalists Maude Barlow and Vandana Shiva join us. Says Shiva, "Most civilizations of the world, for most of human history, have seen the world in terms of relatedness and connection,” says Shiva....

Speaking at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, Bolivian President Evo Morales warned against throwing out the Kyoto Protocol, saying such a move could result in ecocide or genocide. Bolivia has become a leading critic of how the climate talks have developed and of last year’s U.S.-backed Copenhagen Accord. At a news conference, Morales also talked about U.S. dispatches on Bolivia unearthed by WikiLeaks and his response to recent...

At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern refuses to comment on the WikiLeaks cables’ account of discussions with the European Union on using climate aid to gain the backing of small island states for the informal Copenhagen Accord reached at last year’s U.N. climate summit. He also avoided answering a question addressing the removal of funding to Bolivia and Ecuador, whose...